The U.S. Election of 2008

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In a national Election laden with historical significance, Barack Hussein Obama captured a decisive majority in the 2008 balloting to become the 44th president of the United States; he was scheduled to be sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2009. Obama, a 47-year-old Democratic U.S. senator from Illinois, won the electoral college vote 365–173 over Republican John McCain, a 72-year-old U.S. senator from Arizona. Obama prevailed 52.9–45.7% in the popular vote nationwide on November 4.

President-elect Barack Obama waving to the crowd at a massive election night rally in Chicago's Grant Park on Nov. 4, 2008. With him are (from left) his daughters, Sasha and Malia, and his wife, Michelle.Jae C. Hong/AP

Though it seemed that every U.S. election had been hailed as historic, Obama’s triumph was exceptional. He became the first African American elected as U.S. president and the first person of colour to head a country with a white-majority population. McCain, in a graceful concession speech, noted the pride that many Americans felt in that development following the long United States record of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. The country, McCain said, is now “a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time.”

Obama’s youth and charisma, and his relative political inexperience, provoked comparisons to U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. Obama was elected as the country approached crisis, and this prompted allusions to former presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and even Abraham Lincoln. With an unpopular sitting president and the Republican establishment in disarray, Democrats were overwhelming favourites to win the presidency in 2008. After an exhaustive campaign, Obama ultimately made his case by demonstrating an unflappable eloquence that wore away doubts and prompted critics to say that he transcended both racial and partisan politics.

As the party nomination campaigns got under way in early 2007, neither Obama nor McCain was favoured. Obama, especially, was well behind New York Sen. Hillary Clinton; he had first come to national attention only in 2004, in a well-received speech at the Democratic National Convention. Public opinion polls showed that weariness with the U.S. intervention in Iraq was the top issue, but opinion was sharply divided over what should be done. Obama called for a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops, while McCain had long pushed for an escalation in hopes of a decisive military victory. Both approaches appealed to influential elements of their respective party bases.

A U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq approved by Pres. George W. Bush initially produced higher U.S. casualties in early 2007, and many Democrats declared the move a Vietnam-style failure. McCain’s campaign nearly collapsed in July when he came close to running out of funds and laid off half of his campaign staff. By late fall, however, it was obvious that the surge was succeeding, and McCain began mounting a notable resurgence. His main opponents—former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney—failed to catch fire, and a late bid by former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson fell short. By early 2008 McCain was the clear Republican front-runner. The Republican contest was officially over in early March, but McCain was favoured to win the nomination when he defeated Huckabee in a competitive South Carolina primary on January 19.

Obama had a far-more-difficult road. Although he attracted enthusiastic crowds and solid fund-raising totals from the start, he plodded through innumerable 2007 candidate joint appearances without distinguishing himself. Clinton’s campaign successfully portrayed her as the inevitable nominee, with a substantial early lead in establishment support, fund-raising, and public opinion polls. Clinton also had serious problems, however. Many Democrats feared that she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, were polarizing figures and that she could not win a general election; in addition, her campaign staff fought internally and failed to produce a winning strategic plan.

Obama, by contrast, combined an uplifting speaking style with a smoothly functioning campaign that became known as “no-drama Obama.” While Clinton went for knockout victories in early deciding Democratic states, Obama played a longer game, seeking delegates by the ones and twos all over the country. His campaign tapped thousands of small contributors through the Internet and then approached them repeatedly for more funding. To counter Clinton’s inside experience, Obama underscored his status as an outsider, promising “hope and change” and encouraging rally supporters to proclaim, “Yes we can.”

At the first real test of strength, in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, 2008, Obama’s organization helped turn out more than 250,000 Iowan caucus goers—double the previous record turnout—and scored a decisive victory. Polls in New Hampshire, the site of the next primary event, showed Obama edging ahead, and it seemed likely that the nomination might be unexpectedly decided in January. Clinton scored a narrow New Hampshire victory, however, and as other candidates began dropping out, Obama and Clinton began a long ground war through the winter and spring.

Obama suffered several setbacks. The underperforming Clinton campaign produced a television ad, “Red Phone 3 am.” that skillfully exploited widespread voter doubts about Obama’s readiness to handle an international crisis. Some critics began accenting his middle name, implying that he was Muslim, and hinting that he had benefited from racial preferences. Obama eventually became enmeshed by ties to a series of Illinois allies, including former 1960s radical William Ayers, political fixer Tony Rezko, and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s longtime family pastor. Over several weeks, copies of Wright’s fiery sermons, laced with black nationalism, and his aggressive press statements put Obama on the defensive. A tape surfaced showing Wright blasting U.S. foreign policy after 9/11—“God damn America”—and Obama defensively claimed he was unaware of many of Wright’s views.

Obama confronted the matter head-on, delivering on March 18 a well-received speech on race in U.S. politics at the National Constitution Center museum in Philadelphia. He declared that America had long suffered from excessive attention to racial differences; the choice now was to remain there, preoccupied by a distraction, or alternatively to move on to resolving real American problems. While his remarks were criticized as self-serving, the speech quickly diffused his Wright association problems, and Obama was bolstered by handling his most difficult issue with sober aplomb.

The Obama campaign pounced when Clinton told several audiences about being “under fire” while arriving in 1996 at an airport in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A tape of the event showed a schoolgirl handing her flowers but no gunfire. For his part, Obama was taped telling a wealthy San Francisco fund-raising audience that frustrated working-class Americans tended to “get bitter, they cling to guns or religion.”

After an extended period of wooing convention superdelegates—usually elected and party officials—Obama finally won sufficient backing to claim the Democratic nomination on June 3, the final day of the primary season. Clinton conceded four long days later. Clinton had won most big primary states—including New York, California, New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, and Massachusetts—and captured more popular primary votes. Obama prevailed, however, with a tortoise-and-hare strategy and his superior organization. He was especially strong in caucus states, where depth of loyalty was tested, and among superdelegates concerned about electability in the general election.

As they prepared to name their vice presidential running mates, both McCain and Obama needed to shore up important segments of their support. McCain, still too moderate for many conservative GOP voters, needed an infusion of party enthusiasm. Obama had been faulted for a lack of foreign policy experience; he made a belated first-ever trip Afghanistan in late July.

Though supporters of Clinton made a major push on her behalf for the vice presidential spot, Obama eventually selected as his running mate Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden, a 36-year Senate veteran, had earlier dropped his own bid for the nomination, but he was a proven commodity unlikely to produce negative surprises. The choice was readily accepted by the Democratic National Convention in Denver, where Obama gave a highly publicized acceptance speech at Invesco Field before some 75,000 party faithful.

For his part, McCain threw a bombshell into the equation by choosing as his vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin, the largely unknown two-year governor of Alaska. Palin arrived on the national stage as a photogenic fresh face, with populist and reformer credentials and solid support from social conservatives. Almost single-handedly, Palin energized the GOP base and electrified what had promised to be a lacklustre Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., in early September. When McCain began touring the country with Palin, his crowds grew notably larger and more enthusiastic. The polling “bounce” from Palin was so large that in early September public opinion polls put McCain ahead of Obama by a small margin.

While Biden had been carefully examined over the years and any shortcomings identified and discounted, Palin was largely unknown to the skeptical national press. She had been selected quickly and had little time to become immersed in federal issues, especially foreign affairs, and this caused critics to question her readiness to assume the presidency. Palin’s initial national press interviews had shaky moments, and the news that the Republican National Committee had purchased for her $150,000 in clothing and accessories largely offset her initial boost to the McCain ticket.

Obama made a key decision at midyear. During the primary, under prompting by McCain, Obama stated that he would accept public funding for the general election under a law that capped campaign expenditures. As his fund-raising success exceeded all previous records, however, Obama reversed field, declined federal funds, and eventually collected some $745 million in contributions—double the total of any previous presidential candidate. McCain raised about $320 million, including the $84 million in public financing allotted to each candidate. That disparity allowed Obama to dominate the final months in both media and organization efforts across the country. McCain’s camp protested that Obama’s reversal on public financing received only modest criticism from news organizations and reflected media bias favouring the Democrat. Obama, again playing it safe and exploiting his financial advantage, later declined McCain’s invitation to stage a series of 10 town-hall-style debates across the country.

Relevant election issues shifted over the campaign. With Iraq becoming more secure by the day, public concern over the costly war on terrorism eased, ironically moving a potentially potent McCain issue to the back burner. In the meantime, Obama toned down his early liberal issue positions, balancing his Iraq withdrawal stance by advocating more U.S. troops for the Afghanistan front. He also exploited a growing uncertainty over the economy by calling for a middle-class tax cut (he promised that 95% of working Americans would see a reduced tax bill) and universal health care for all Americans—to be achieved without a government takeover of the system.

With McCain running as a moderate and Obama tacking toward the centre in the general election, issue distinctions between the candidates were minimized. For example, by mid-2008 voters were more concerned with rising energy prices (gasoline topped $4 per gallon) than with any terrorist threat. On one key hot-button energy issue, however, both McCain and Obama were in agreement—they opposed oil and natural-gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

On September 15 the election took a decisive turn when the Lehman Brothers investment banking house collapsed into bankruptcy. As the contagion spread to brokerage and even insurance firms, public confidence in both the economy and government oversight plummeted, causing serious damage to McCain, a free-market advocate, and lending credibility to Obama’s mantra for change. McCain’s tenuous polling lead disappeared.

As Congress debated the economic situation in late September, McCain dramatically suspended his campaign, returned to Washington, and demanded a White House meeting on the crisis. The same day Lehman failed, he claimed that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong,” but a few days later he compared Wall Street to a casino and promised to fire the nation’s top securities regulator. He also threatened for a time to boycott the first scheduled debate, which was set to take place on September 26, claiming that action on the economy deserved priority. For his part, Obama joined the White House discussion but took a low-key approach and refused to call off the debate. When McCain could not persuade congressional Republicans to back an initial federal intervention idea, both his leadership and his judgment came under fire.

Obama’s coolness in the face of the financial meltdown and McCain’s erratic reaction likely sealed the election, eroding remaining doubts about Obama’s relative ability to handle a crisis. As Time magazine recounted the episode later, “The assumption all year was that if the Furies delivered turmoil to the doorstep of this election, the country would retreat to the safe choice and not risk a rookie. It was Obama’s triumph that the financial crisis that might have buried him actually raised him up, let voters judge his judgment in real time, the 3 am phone call that came night after night.”

The three presidential debates were largely uneventful. McCain, seeking to counter opinion that he was too old, debated in an animated and forceful manner, but Obama, who typically avoided as much back-and-forth as possible, appeared calm and presidential by contrast. In mid-October a man hoping to buy a plumbing business challenged Obama during an unscripted campaign visit to an Ohio neighbourhood; the man claimed that small business would be hurt by Obama’s plan to increase taxes on upper-income earners. Obama replied that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

The incident provided a final ray of hope for the McCain camp. Republicans implied that Obama’s comments endorsed socialism, and at the final debate on October 15, McCain made repeated references to “Joe the Plumber” and the harm Obama’s policies might inflict on a fragile economy. Cracks appeared in Joe’s life story, however, and the Obama camp claimed that Joe might actually receive a tax cut under their overall plan. As a result, the final barrier to Obama’s election faded away.

On election day, voter turnout topped 131 million, or 61.6% of eligible voters, the highest total percentage since 1968. Exit polls showed blacks, Hispanics, and young people voting in notably greater numbers. Obama carried 28 states (including 9 won in 2004 by President Bush), virtually sweeping the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West Coast and even making serious inroads into the Deep South and Mountain West areas that had been recent Republican redoubts. (SeeMap.) Democrats also made decisive gains in congressional elections, gaining a net 21 House seats (for a 257–178 advantage) and picking up at least 7 Senate seats, or a 58–41 majority. A possible eighth Democratic gain, in Minnesota, was still under dispute at year’s end.

Obama’s success was based on a large number of factors: his personal charisma and eloquence, his well-organized and sure-footed campaign, voter weariness with a Republican White House, a struggling national economy, and his overwhelming advantage in fund-raising. Despite his best efforts, McCain could not separate himself from the status quo. In the end the American people were ready for change from politics as usual, and Obama had demonstrated that he was best able to provide it.